I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [65]
I had barely assimilated into the show when a call came. “One of our dancers has had an appendectomy. Would you like to join the company for the European tour?” Would I! My first day off from Call Me Madam, I rushed to the City Center Theater to watch a performance of the ballet company, my future home. The ballet mistress, Vida Brown, took one look at me, saw I was healthy, and said, “We need you in our ballet company now!” Stunned, I was still trying to comprehend what she meant as I was whisked upstairs to the dressing room and pulled into pink tights. The opening ballet for the evening was Swan Lake. Someone pulled my hair back into a bun and stuck white feathers over my ears. Another dancer kept trying to fit toe shoes on my feet, and decided that Tanaquil LeClercq’s shoes were the best fit. By the time I reached the wings (without makeup but in full costume), the Prince and the Swan Queen were just finishing their first encounter. The swans’ entrance music started, and I was pushed onstage as one of the swans whispered, “Follow me.” I was given whispered instructions throughout the ballet, what steps to dance and where to dance them, by the nearest swan. In what seemed like seconds, the Prince was kneeling in despair, the Swan Queen exiting dramatically, and the curtain closed. I was trembling like a leaf. Lots of hugs, smiles, and “Welcome to New York City Ballet” marked my hectic and unusual entrance to the company. In the course of the following week, I continued to perform each night in Call Me Madam while training my replacement for that show, found my birth certificate, got a passport, packed for the six-month tour, squeezed in company classes, and flew off to Spain with the New York City Ballet.
Carrie, happiest in the air—you can’t keep a good girl down—Seattle, 1962 (image credit 8.2)
I fell in love right away! When she chatted with her pals in the hallways after class (they all called her Carrie), her giggle was infectious, and she had a charming, light, Texas drawl. I started asking around about her—the FBI couldn’t have done better. Carrie came from Highland Park, a suburb of Dallas—3641 Mockingbird Lane—had gone to Highland Park High School, had been a marksman on the rifle team, and was captain of the basketball team. She had trained in dance with the legendary Kingsbury Sisters, and had performed in summer stock at the Texas State Fair in Dallas. She had a younger sister, Marilyn; her ancestors were the first settlers of what was to become Waco, Texas, and they once owned most of the land along the adjacent Brazos River. One descendant on her mother’s side, John Carroll, signed the Declaration of Independence.
Carrie in a café. Is that a white horse kissing her head? (image credit 8.3)
A train station break in Montreux, Switzerland; dreaming of Carrie as I watch her have a coffee (image credit 8.4)
After our six-month tour in 1952, it took me another three months to gather the courage to ask her for a date. Giggling, she said, “Okay.” We sat together in the top row of the upper balcony for the City Opera’s production of Rossini’s La Cenerentola. I think Carrie was sitting next to me, and the stage seemed a half mile away. Opera and ballet were siblings at City Center. Though a ticket in the upper balcony cost a buck, I got ours for free. I was not yet eighteen; Carrie was twenty-four. She must have gone out with me from pity.
It took months of dating before I found enough boldness to kiss her; even then, it was only a brush of the lips. Later, when I tried to touch her breast with my hand, she gently